Oliver Kamm

Phases of the lunar cycle

The Canadian federal election, held this week, looks to be a close contest. The National Post meanwhile spots a thoughtful social critic at a rally for the Conservative leader, Stephen Harper:

Outside, about 15 protesters warned of eroded equality under a socially right-wing regime.

"Like Hitler? Love Harper. Respect the Charter of Rights," said a sign held by Edmonton resident Rob Wells.

"You're sick," he was repeatedly told by Conservative supporters who filed into the conference centre.

Wells defended the provocative placard, comparing Harper's penchant for military buildup and socially conservative values to Adolf Hitler's early policies in the 1930s.

"Placed on the defensive by its own recklessness..."

My preceding post, about the pro-Palestinian group the International Solidarity Movement, argued that among the organisation's most disturbing characteristics were the political naivete of its young volunteers and the use to which that quality was put. This point was brought out in more detail in an article entitled The Death of Rachel Corrie in the left-wing magazine Mother Jones last autumn:

ISM has also found itself placed on the defensive by its own recklessness. During a raid on their Jenin office on March 27, Israeli soldiers arrested Shadi Sukiya, an alleged Islamic Jihad guerrilla found hiding with two ISM activists. The IDF says that Sukiya, 20, was a “senior militant” who’d sent four suicide attackers into Israel. ISM insists he was an innocent, terrified teenager who’d asked for refuge during an Israeli sweep. But following the incident, the International Committee for the Red Cross, which occupies an office in the same compound, asked the ISM to leave the premises. In late April, two Pakistan-born Britons posing as activists stopped in for tea at the group’s office in Rafah. Five days later one Briton blew himself up at the entrance to a Tel Aviv pub called Mike’s Place, killing three and wounding dozens. (The other escaped; his battered body later washed ashore near Tel Aviv.) The ISM denied any link to the bomber. “Their sole contact [with us] was a brief social encounter in Rafah in the Gaza Strip and no ‘links’ were ‘forged’ in such a short time,” a spokesman said. Still, the perception has lingered that the group is a sympathizer—and even a harborer—of terrorists. “These unsubstantiated allegations about their involvement in terror have tarred all human-rights groups,” says Sissons of Human Rights Watch. “Some of them are dedicated and disciplined, but in a difficult environment you also need to be smart. They’ve got a problem keeping control of their people.”

The ISM disclaims support for terrorism, but its position falls squarely within the corrosive tendency portrayed by the political philosopher Michael Walzer in an important article entitled Excusing Terror - The Politics of Ideological Apology:

[W]hen moral justification [for terror] is ruled out, the way is opened for ideological apology. In parts of the European and American left, there has long existed a political culture of excuses focused defensively on one or another of the older terrorist organizations: the IRA, FLN, PLO, and so on. The arguments are familiar enough, and their repetition in the days since September 11 is no surprise. Still, it is important to look at them closely and reject them explicitly....

Of course [say these elements], it is wrong to kill the innocent, but these victims aren't entirely innocent. They are the beneficiaries of oppression; they enjoy its tainted fruits. And so, while their murder isn't justifiable, it is ... understandable. What else could they expect? Well, the children among them, and even the adults, have every right to expect a long life like anyone else who isn't actively engaged in war or enslavement or ethnic cleansing or brutal political repression. This is called noncombatant immunity, the crucial principle not only of war but of any decent politics. Those who give it up for a moment of schadenfreude are not simply making excuses for terrorism; they have joined the ranks of terror's supporters.

That type of ideological premise can only be expected to imbue a campaigning organisation - as the spokesman from Human Rights Watch delicately intimates - with an inherent, and not an accidental, problem of controlling its own people.

It's only fair to add that the ISM has been ventilating its displeasure with Mother Jones ever since the article appeared, despite the fact the tone overall is quite sympathetic to the organisation. For some people, only adulation will do. As 'Palestine Media Watch' enjoins its supporters:

Please contact Mother Jones and ask them why a supposedly progressive magazine would publish such a reactionary piece whose sources of information are right-wing polemicists and whose message is that one should not get involved in changing the status quo.

Among the charges levelled against the article's author, Joshua Hammer of Newsweek, is that:

[He] concludes with the contrived and melodramatic claim that "Corrie herself has faded into obscurity, a subject of debate in Internet chat rooms and practically nowhere else," again ignoring a wealth of information to the contrary, such as a Nobel Peace Prize nomination.

Whether a Nobel Peace Prize nomination (which, after all, could be made on behalf of anyone by anyone who happens to have been elected to a national parliament) constitutes a wealth of information is an issue I shall pass over, for I suspect we shall be hearing more from the ISM's activists about that particular nomination, but perhaps with a lack of accompanying detail. I'm happy to fill in the gaps. The nomination was made just over a year ago, in the following letter to the Nobel Prize committee:

As a member of the House of Commons of Canada, and as the International Human Rights advocate for the New Democratic Party of Canada, it [sic] is my pleasure to nominate the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) for the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize.

The contribution of the ISM to advancing the cause of peace in the Middle East, to defending human rights, and to upholding international law is without parallel. This organization's selfless efforts to promote peace and protect the lives of innocent civilians in the Israeli- Palestinian conflict clearly merit international recognition.

Although this nomination is for the ISM as a whole, three young individuals merit particular recognition for the courage and resolve they displayed in their acts of non-violent civil disobedience in defence of peace and human rights in the Palestinian Occupied Territories. These individuals are Brian Avery and Tom Hurndall, who miraculously survived sniper shots to the head by Israeli forces while they were defending Palestinian civilians from Israeli troops, and Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death by an Israeli Defence Force bulldozer while attempting to prevent the demolition of the home of an innocent Palestinian family. A Nobel Peace Prize for the ISM would be a fitting testament to the fortitude and principle exemplified by the members of this organization and these three individuals in particular.

Thank you for accepting this nomination.

Sincerely yours,

Svend J Robinson, MP

Having held his seat in the Canadian House of Commons since 1979, Mr Robinson - who is still only in his early fifties - suddenly bowed out of the current general election campaign. Fortunately in a fortnight's time he will have an opportunity to make a further public exposition of the importance of upholding legal standards, as the Toronto Globe and Mail reported last week:

More than two months after tearfully confessing that he pocketed a pricey ring, NDP MP Svend Robinson has been charged with theft after a lengthy police and Crown probe of the case. Special prosecutor Leonard Doust submitted his report yesterday to officials in British Columbia's criminal justice branch, who agreed with Mr. Doust's suggestion to lay the charge. The official charge is one count of theft of a ring valued in excess of $5,000. If he is convicted, the maximum penalty is 10 years, said Geoffrey Gaul, director of British Columbia's Legal Services.

Mr. Robinson, 52, who has been in seclusion for weeks at a summer retreat on Galiano Island that he shares with his partner, Max Riveron, has been summoned to appear in Provincial Court on July 8 in Richmond.

The alleged theft took place at an auction near the Vancouver airport.

Naturally none of this has any bearing on the merits of the ISM's nomination for the Nobel Prize. I did say a nomination could be made by anyone elected to parliament.

Channel 4 evades the truth behind a death in Gaza

The following article appears in The Times today.

THE annual Bafta awards do not include a category for Most Inapt Venture in Hagiography. If they did, the winner for 2004 would be Channel 4’s documentary Death of an Idealist, broadcast on Monday.

Its subject, Rachel Corrie, was a young American member of a pro-Palestinian group called the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). While protesting against the demolition of a house in Gaza last year she was run over by an Israeli bulldozer, and later died from her injuries. The horror of her death can scarcely be imagined. Less obvious is the sense in suggesting that its circumstances are suspicious. The programme’s narrator intoned darkly that Israel “denies her death was deliberate”. Yet Miss Corrie sat down in the path of a vehicle whose cab was several feet off the ground and whose driver had limited visibility. The chances of a tragic outcome were high.

Rachel Corrie has since become an icon for her cause. The most effective way to maintain her in that state of grace is to refrain from examining what she stood for. The programme’s euphemism that the ISM “performs direct actions in Gaza against Israeli occupation” accomplished this evasion nicely.

The ISM is not a peace organisation. It declares: “We recognise the Palestinian right to resist Israeli violence and occupation via legitimate armed struggle.” Though it protests that “the ISM does not support or condone any acts of terrorism, because terrorism is not legitimate armed struggle”, the amplification is disingenuous. The organisation does not define suicide bombers as terrorists: it refers to them instead as “martyrs”, and unmistakably regards them as heroic, if misguided, figures. As one ISM activist asks rhetorically on the group’s website: “Is there a proud people anywhere that might not be driven to such measures to defend themselves?” (Yes, of course there is — among innumerable examples, the opposition to apartheid, or Kurdish resistance to Saddam.)

ONLY twice in the programme was suicide terrorism mentioned. Once was by the Corrie family recalling their concern for Rachel’s safety. Yet no discussion of the Palestinians’ plight makes sense without understanding Israel’s urgent task of protecting its citizens from terrorism. The programme declared: “The Israeli Army strictly controls who comes in and who comes out of Gaza.” The notion that there might be some reasonable explanation for that policy — stopping the bombers from getting through — was left unstated.

The second half of the film followed a trip by Rachel’s parents to the place where their daughter had died. I hope it gave them solace; it certainly did not provide political insight. Craig Corrie admitted that part of him wished his daughter “had kept the blinders on” rather than followed her conscience to Gaza, but judging by Rachel’s own words it was her ideological “awakening” that had imposed the blinders in the first place. “I am in the midst of a genocide,” she wrote, indifferent to language and history.

Ms Corrie was in fact in the midst of conflicting national claims that must one day be reconciled in a territorial settlement resembling the pre-1967 armistice lines. The cause to which she gave her life inflames that conflict. The ISM does not operate against the terrorist enemies of a two-state outcome. Its “human shields” do not travel on Jerusalem buses in order to protect Israeli civilians from suicide bombers. Its principal activity is knowingly to endanger its young volunteers. As an ISM founder chillingly told The Washington Post: “We’re like a peace army. Generals send young men and women off to operations and some die.”

Perhaps Channel 4 will take a searching look at this disturbing phenomenon and make a film about it. A thoughtful documentary from that quarter is overdue.

A resilient canard

In his recent book The Case for Israel, Alan Dershowitz writes:

The Jewish nation of Israel stands accused in the dock of international justice. The charges include being a criminal state, the prime violator of human rights, the mirror image of Nazism, and the most intransigent barrier to peace in the Middle East. Throughout the world, from the chambers of the United Nations to the campuses of universities, Israel is singled out for condemnation, divestment, boycott, and demonisation. Its leaders are threatened with prosecution as war criminals. Its supporters are charged with dual loyalty and parochialism.

Unfortunately, Dershowitz is right to note that it is no longer unusual to hear accusations of dual loyalty. A generation ago a Labour MP, Andrew Faulds, caused outrage and his dismissal from the front bench when he made such a charge against his Jewish parliamentary colleagues. Yet according to Melanie Phillips in an Observer article , the charge was recently resurrected by a Tory MP, Robert Jackson, in a debate conducted under the auspices of a highly reputable journal.

I was still not quite prepared, however, to find myself the recipient of a similar sentiment by a pseudonymous commenter on this blog. He sarcastically advises another contributor, who had ventured that a US President's responsibilities were to the United States:

[I]f you'd been assimilating the constant theme of this blog a little longer, you'd realise that Nixon's responsibility - like that of everyone else on the planet, in thought, word and deed - is to Israel.

One of the themes of this blog is that support for Israel's security and independence - not just, in the demeaning phrase, her 'right to exist' - is an essential liberal cause. The reason I support Israel is not primarily that she is a Jewish state - though I consider the history of modern Europe demonstrates overwhelming grounds for a homeland for the Jews - but that she is a constitutional democracy. She shares our values, and is on our side. I hope that within a few years - though I fear it will take much longer - there will be a territorial accommodation between Israel and the Palestinians that resembles (though is not identical to) the pre-1967 armistice line, with two sovereign states. But the precondition of that outcome - which will be not a 'solution', but the result of a solution - is that Israel defeats the terrorism that pursues her annihilation and threatens her citizens.

It is an illegitimate political argument to charge that position and those who hold it with 'dual loyalty'. Those who share my judgement that the pro-Israel position is above all about democratic values will be unsurprised to find the 'dual loyalty' charge represented among elements whose relationship with democratic politics is remote. Here is the far-Left magazine Counterpunch, edited by Alexander Cockburn, on the matter:

"Dual loyalties" has always been one of those red flags posted around the subject of Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict, something that induces horrified gasps and rapid heartbeats because of its implication of Jewish disloyalty to the United States and the common assumption that anyone who would speak such a canard is ipso facto an anti-Semite.

And here is exactly the same article, with proper attribution, reproduced on the web site of the pseudo-historian David Irving. For the benefit of readers outside the UK, I should point out that Irving has been found in an English court of law to be not just ipso facto an antisemite but "an active Holocaust denier [who] is anti-Semitic and racist and [who] associates with right wing extremists who promote neo-Nazism".

How appropriate that a resilient canard should find favour among quacks.

Change and decay

In his essay Politics and the English Language, George Orwell memorably translated a verse from Ecclesiastes, from the language of the Authorised Version into a certain type of modern English. The verse reads:

I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Orwell's parody:

Objective considerations of contemporary phenomena compel the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.

It's no longer funny. The Times reports:

THE Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has given his personal backing to a new translation of the New Testament in which St Paul’s notorious condemnations of gay sex are deleted and Christians are told to go out and have more sex. Instead of condemning fornicators, adulterers and “abusers of themselves with mankind”, the new version of his first letter to Corinth has St Paul advising Christians not to go without sex for too long in case they get “frustrated”.

Now, I consider that the Christian Church has been responsible for much needless suffering as a result of being guided by the Pauline epistles on matters of sex (and in particular on homosexuality). But if I were a Christian I would find this new translation - which is apparently not a joke - little short of blasphemous. The problem is not only in rewriting St Paul to render his message the opposite of what he says, it is more fundamentally about rewriting a sacramental language to render it banal. Here, according to The Times, is the new translation's version of an episode in Mark's Gospel, set aside the same passage in the Authorised Version.

Mark 1:10-11

Authorised version: “And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him. And there came a voice from the heaven saying, Thou are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

New: As he was climbing up the bank again, the sun shone through a gap in the clouds. At the same time a pigeon flew down and perched on him. Jesus took this as a sign that God’s spirit was with him. A voice from overhead was heard saying, ‘That’s my boy! You’re doing fine!’ ”

The most precious possessions of the Church of England are the King James Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, not because they are antiquated (as the Prayer Book, being substantially a revision of Thomas Cranmer's work, was even on publication in 1662) but because they are works of beauty. They take the grandeur of Ciceronian prose and express it in the simple cadences of English. They have informed the canon of English literature as nothing else has. Only in my lifetime (since 1974) has an Act of Parliament enabled Anglican clergy to use alternative versions of Scripture and the Prayer Book - with the results that The Times reveals. The young John Henry Newman maintained that the Established Church represented a Via Media between the Dissenters and the Church of Rome, in which the Prayer Book was the 'depository' of the teaching of the Apostles. If the Church treats its own inheritance with such contempt, it should be prepared for similar feelings from those of us outside it when it pronounces on temporal matters.

Clinton's testimony

There will be much to say over the next few weeks about Bill Clinton, because he has much to say about himself. I consider he was a failure as President, with the partial exception of economic policy. His Treasury appointees were of high quality - Larry Summers, a brilliant economist, was probably the most-qualified man ever to hold the post of Treasury Secretary - and fiscal and monetary policy, and international economic diplomacy, were conducted skilfully. The only obvious caveat is that an opportunity was missed to curb the growth of welfare entitlements. Beyond that, Clinton's administration lacked competence (witness the healthcare debacle), and Clinton himself - the worst human being ever to be President - debased his office.

The Guardian carries what it bills as an exclusive interview with Clinton, in which the following passage appears:

We start with the one area that came tantalisingly close to handing him a golden legacy: the Middle East. With trademark Diet Coke in hand, Clinton rattles off the details of the Israel-Palestine conflict as confidently as he did when he was leading the global effort to end it. Percentages of territory, death tolls on both sides - he is a walking database. It's hardly a surprise. The attempt to make peace between Israelis and Palestinians was one of the constant threads of his presidency, bringing one of its greatest successes - the 1993 handshake between Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn - and a lethal failure, the ill-fated peace talks at Camp David in 2000.

My Life is full of fond reminiscences of the early days of that effort: how he advised Arafat not to wear a pistol for that signing ceremony, how he and his aides devised a physical manoeuvre that would prevent the Palestinian leader attempting to kiss Rabin as well as shake his hand.

But he also details the deterioration of the process, giving his account of the Camp David debacle that led to the outbreak of the intifada that still rages. Clinton's version is that Israel's Ehud Barak was ready to make enormous concessions but that Arafat was not able to "make the final jump from revolutionary to statesman ... he just couldn't bring himself to say yes".

Just before Clinton left office, Arafat thanked him for all his efforts and told the president he was a great man. "'Mr Chairman,' I replied, 'I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you have made me one.'"

I record this without comment, for it has the hallmarks of truth. For all that, and characteristically, Clinton lacks the insight necessary to see that Arafat's behaviour was not an idiosyncrasy but a pathology. Arafat didn't make peace, because Arafat can't make peace. He is a corrupt and squalid autocrat. The day must come when a pacific Palestinian state is established alongside Israel in something close, but not identical, to the borders of the pre-1967 armistice. But there is no virtue in pretending that an agreement can be reached regardless of current political exigencies. Failure has a price; the tragedy is that the price of Arafat's obduracy and duplicity must be paid by others.

Writing for children

A year ago I commented on a thoroughly enjoyable kicking that Stephen Pollard, writing in the Sunday Telegraph, gave to the adult devotees of Harry Potter. Stephen said:

I am assuming, given that this is The Telegraph and not The Beano, that I do not have to point out that the Harry Potter books are children's books. But given the number of seemingly intelligent, normal adults who display not the slightest embarrassment discussing the finer points of quidditch with other adults, or who are perfectly happy to sit on a train, in full view of the rest of the carriage, reading any of the four previous instalments, I am probably making an assumption too far.

I have every sympathy with his irritation. Yet some children's books, including but not only works of fantasy, have a genuine place in English literature. One of my pleasures since becoming a father a couple of years ago has been to acquire for my children's library some of the books I enjoyed as a child, and that I hope they will come to relish too. Following the penchant for lists that Professor Norman Geras - whose wife is a noted children's author - has introduced to his blog, I give below the ten books that I consider the greatest works ever written in English (though with one translation from the French) for children:

1. Five Children and It, by E. Nesbit

2. The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett

3. Tom's Midnight Garden, by Philippa Pearce

4. Fattypuffs and Thinifers, by Andre Maurois

5. Mistress Masham's Repose, by T.H. White

6. The Land of Green Ginger, by Noel Langley

7. The Pirates in the Deep Green Sea, by Eric Linklater

8. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, by L. Frank Baum

9. The Princess and the Goblin, by George MacDonald

10. The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris, by Leon Garfield

The obvious omission here is Lewis Carroll. I have never met anyone who as a child truly enjoyed Alice; I certainly didn't. The polymath and Carroll enthusiast Martin Gardner explains the conundrum thus. Alice lacks narrative thread. Whereas Dorothy in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz at least gets as far as Kansas, Alice doesn't even manage to get to the end of a chess board. She has one experience after another, with no apparent connection. Her dream-like experiences are thus paradoxically also more like real life - which has a narrative only in retrospect - than a more typical story-book. For that reason, Gardner surmises, Alice appeals far more to adults (especially mathematicians and philosophers) than to children.

The uses of scare quotes

One of the charges often made by us supporters of the war on Islamist terrorism is that the peace movement is guilty of drawing a spurious moral equivalence between the perpetrators of terror and those who respond defensively to it. Sometimes I wonder how far our argument holds.

Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, wrote an apt and moving commentary for the magazine a few weeks ago in which he lamented what he termed the foul actions of the Israeli Defence Forces in opening fire on a demonstration that included children. I believe he was right to use such language, even though I find it inconceivable that the resulting deaths were intended: it was culpably irresponsible to deploy tanks in such an area, close to civilians. Wieseltier argued that sometimes it's necessary for responsible moral agents to try to draw parallels within their experience and observation. He gave the particular example of the Israeli Cabinet Minister Tommy Lapid's invocation of the memory of his grandmother, a Holocaust victim, when recounting the televison image of an elderly Palestinian woman. Lapid was not comparing the plight of the Palestinians to that of pre-war European Jewry - a conceit that would be grotesque and historically false - but was focusing simply on the characteristics of those who suffer.

It was a difficult argument, and I'm glad Wieseltier made it. He is a committed supporter of Israel, writing in a magazine that ranks among Israel's strongest allies in the Western media. I too am a friend and supporter of Israel, and I consider that standing by Israel in her struggle against terrorism is a cause as axiomatic for liberals as was opposition to apartheid or support for Soviet dissidents in an earlier generation. Wieseltier's point made me think and reflect about the moral compromises that support for even a just war necessarily involves us in.

Yet then again, I run across something like this. It's a letter in today's Independent from one Debra Hart, writing from France:

Sir: A US airstrike kills 20 in Falluja and provokes no condemnation. One American hostage is beheaded and the "murderers" are denounced worldwide. Would someone please tell me why Mr Johnson's death is worth so many more column inches than the un-named, and un-cared-about Iraqis.

You read it correctly. Those who cut the head off an American engineer, a civilian trying to make a living for himself, are not murderers: they are "murderers". The writer is so concerned to advance a tendentious political argument about moral equivalence that she declines to use straightforwardly and unexceptionably the only word that is adequate to her context. So far from being a vehicle for encouraging empathy, her use of language is evidence of the atrophy of moral reflection. There has been a lot of that in the last 21 months, much of it in this country in the columns of the supposedly liberal press.

Putting the hype in "hyperbole"

The Financial Times' first leader (requires subscription, so I won't trouble with the link) makes various dogmatic assertions about the congressional commission's conclusion that there is no evidence to link Saddam Hussein to the September 11 attacks. It is entitled "Bush has misled Americans on Iraq", but could better be summarised as "FT misleads everyone on Iraq". It complains indignantly:

[N]ot one US assertion to the United Nations Security Council by Colin Powell, secretary of state, in February last year, has been substantiated.

Oh yes? What about this one?

My colleagues, Operative Paragraph 4 of UN Resolution 1441, which we lingered over so long last fall, clearly states that false statements and omissions in the declaration and a failure by Iraq at any time to comply with and cooperate fully in the implementation of this resolution shall constitute -- the facts speak for themselves -- shall constitute a further material breach of its obligation.

We wrote it this way to give Iraq an early test, to give Iraq an early test. Would they give an honest declaration and would they, early on, indicate a willingness to cooperate with the inspectors? It was designed to be an early test. They failed that test.

By this standard, the standard of this Operative Paragraph, I believe that Iraq is now in further material breach of its obligations. I believe this conclusion is irrefutable and undeniable.

Does the FT deny that Iraq was in material breach of its obligations under 1441, and indeed 16 preceding resolutions? If it does, it should say so openly. And if not, it should say why it believes Saddam Hussein should have had a free pass where adherence to international legal requirements was concerned.

In truth, the FT is probably guilty of little more than thoughtless overstatement on this. But the rest of the column demonstrates a more culpable degree of intellectual idleness:

[U]ntil recently, polls regularly showed more than half of Americans believed Iraq was behind the attack on New York's twin towers.

I believe this urban legend stems from an article by John le Carre in The Times in January 2003, entitled - with balance and dispassion - 'The United States has gone mad', and widely reproduced by anti-war activists since then. In it, the celebrated spy novelist stated:

A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre.

Le Carre was guilty of creative elision. The poll he was alluding to was one conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates for Knight-Ridder Newspapers on 3-6 January 2003. It found that exactly 50 per cent of its sample believed that at least one of the hijackers on 9/11 was Iraqi (with 21 per cent believing that 'most of them' were). That was a factually mistaken belief, but it was hardly an outlandish one, and it certainly did not bear the interpretation le Carre put upon it.

Since le Carre wrote, the legend has persisted. One much-trumpeted poll reported in the Washington Post last September concluded that 69 per cent of Americans "thought it at least likely that Hussein was involved in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon" - yet it's clear that this finding depends on the way the question is asked. Since February 2003 the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland has regularly tested public opinion on the relationship between Saddam and al-Qaeda, asking respondents to select one of four options ranging from "no connection at all" to "Iraq was directly involved in carrying out the September 11th attacks". The latter option has been supported consistently by around 20 per cent - and never more than 25 per cent - of respondents. The belief is flat wrong - but it is (a) substantially lower than the figure cited by the Financial Times and (b) not the same belief as that cited by the FT, either ("was directly involved" is a weaker claim than "was behind"). The bulk of respondents opted for either "a few al-Qaeda individuals visited Iraq or had contact with Iraqi officials" (a view held consistently by around 30 per cent) or (emphasis added) "Iraq gave substantial support to al-Qaeda but was not involved in the September 11th attacks" (around 35 per cent).

Those two middle options strike me as entirely plausible and indeed likely claims. Rather than revealing a nefarious propaganda campaign by the White House, they testify to the good sense and scepticism of American public opinion. I wish the same characteristics were as much in evidence in the pages of the world's premier financial daily.

"Don't trouble me with facts: I'm a Liberal Democrat politician"

[G]iven the shortage of graduates and the vital role that they have in economic growth, why is the Labour Government so determined to put people off going to University in the first place and to saddle those who do attend with thousands of pounds of crippling debts?

Peter Black AM, Liberal Democrat spokesman on Education in the Welsh Assembly, 18 June 2004

[W]ithin developed countries there is no clear link between student numbers and growth rates, GDP per head or productivity. For example, Switzerland, at the top of the income tree, has the lowest university participation rates in the OECD; while the US, also near the top, has the highest. Big increases in university numbers are at least as likely to follow periods of rapid growth as they are to precede them: Japan is a prime example. So when a minister asserts that "We need more young people to go to university because it is an economic necessity," he or she would be hard pressed to back up the claim.

Alison Wolf, Professor of Education at London University, Prospect Magazine, July 2002